Wisdom can only be learned gradually, and every soul is not ready to receive or
to understand the complexity of the purpose of life.

Bowl of Saki, October 6, by Hazrat Inayat Khan

Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:

Man likes complexity. He does not want to take only one step; it is more
interesting to look forward to millions of steps. The man who is seeking the
truth gets into a maze, and that maze interests him. He wants to go through it a
thousand times more. It is just like children. Their whole interest is in
running about; they do not want to see the door and go in until they are very
tired. So it is with adults. They all say that they are seeking truth, but they
like the maze. That is why the mystics made the greatest truths a mystery, to be
given only to the few who were ready for them, letting the others play because
it was the time for them to play.

Truth is simple. But for the very reason that it is simple, people will not take
it; because our life on earth is such that for everything we value, we have to
pay a great price and one wonders, if truth is the most precious of all things,
then how can truth be attained simply? It is this illusion that makes everyone
deny simple truth and seek for complexity. Tell people about something that
makes their heads whirl round and round and round. Even if they do not
understand it, they are most pleased to think, 'It is something substantial. It
is something solid. For, it is an idea we cannot understand, it must be
something lofty.' But something which every soul knows, proving what is divine
in every soul, and which it cannot help but know, that appears to be too cheap,
for the soul already knows it. There are two things: knowing and being. It is
easy to know truth, but most difficult to be truth. It is not in knowing truth
that life's purpose is accomplished; life's purpose is accomplished in being
truth.

- posted to SufiMystic

Chuang Tzu was fishing in the Pu river. The prince of Chu sent two
vice-chancellors with a formal document: We hereby appoint you prime
minister.

Chuang Tzu held his bamboo pole still. Watching the Pu river he said: I
am told there is a sacred tortoise offered and canonized three thousand
years ago, venerated by the prince, wrapped in silk in a precious
shrine on an altar in the temple. What do you think? Is it better to
give up one's life, and leave a sacred shell as an object of cult in a
cloud of incense for three thousand years, or to live as a plain turtle
dragging its tail in the mud? For the turtle, said the
vice-chancellor, better to live and drag its tail in the mud! Go home!
said Chuang Tzu. Leave me here to drag my tail in the mud.

- posted to AdvaitaToZen

Everything you accomplish as a human being is
momentary, perishable. You come in this world
with nothing, you leave with nothing. You can
peruse many things and die without knowing who
you are but if you know who you are you can
never die.

When the mind is let alone to be one with space so that the mental space
becomes united with the physical space, then all that remains inside
and outside is "I" Consciousness, the fullness of pure BEING.

- Ramesh Balsekar, posted to ANetofJewels

Common sense too will tell you that to fulfill a desire you must keep
your mind on it. If you want to know your true nature, you must have
yourself in mind all the time, until the secret of your being stands
revealed.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels

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